This Week at the Statehouse – Week 5

Subommittee meetings and committee meetings filled the lawmakers time this week as they are working on bills to get them voted out a committee prior to their self-imposed first funnel deadline of next Friday, February 16. This is when a bill needs to be voted out of committee for it to remain eligible this session.

The House and Senate did have floor debate this week and passed a 1% supplemental school aid bill for K-12 schools. The Senate also amended and passed their mid-year deappropriations bill. In SF 2117, the Iowa Senate is proposing to cut Iowa’s three public universities by a total of $14.6 million for the current budget, which ends June 30, 2018. This is on top of the mid-year cuts they took last year. The Iowa House is proposing $8.1 million in cuts in HSB 648. Both bills have the Board of Regents decide where to make the cuts; the bill gives them 15 days upon the bill being signed into law to make that determination. The House and Senate still need to come to an agreement before it can be sent to the Governor to be signed into law.

With just over four months left in our fiscal year these cuts will have a huge impact on what we do at UNI! It's imperative the state continues to provide the state funding needed to ensure the cost of a UNI education continues to be reasonable allowing us to remain competitive and affordable for Iowa families. With nearly 90% of UNI's enrollment coming from Iowa, this truly affects Iowa families! If you want to contact your state legislator, you can find them here.

A couple bills of interest debated in subcommittee this week:

SSB 3120 – Free speech on public universities

HF 2301 – Contract bidding by Regents’ institutions

HSB 602/SSB 3087 – Future Ready Iowa grants

HF 2280 – Repeals Praxis requirement

Remember February 19th is #UNIDay2018 at the Capitol! Check out our tweets at @nipanthercaucus

On February 21 President Nook will present UNI’s next year budget requests to the Education Budget Subcommittee.

As always, if you have any questions contact UNI Governmental Relations at mary.braun@uni.edu or call 319-273-6144.